...If All You Want to do is Make a Lot of Money.
Candy Crowley: You know, he comes from a privileged background. You did not come from a privileged background. This is a time - an economic time when people are hurting and have been hurting for quite some time. Do you think that someone who is as wealthy as he is, who has had as much privilege as he is, has a hill to climb to overcome that?
John Boehner: No. The American people don’t want to vote for a loser. They don’t want to vote for someone that hasn’t been successful. I think Mitt Romney has an opportunity to show the American people that they, too, can succeed.
Click to viewSee, we non-millionaires need to recognize the fact that we're losers and that wealthy folks like Romney are wiser and more competent and should be running things.
It's an assumption endemic on the libertarian right. Free market conservatives apparently believe that everybody, deep down, wants to be rich -- and if we don't, there's something wrong with us. Therefore, anyone who's not fabulously wealthy has failed (i.e., "lost") Never mind that there are countless people who decide to enter professions they know are unlikely to make them millionaires even if they're very successful in their field, like social work, teaching, most artistic endeavors... In the mind of many conservatives, the very fact that someone made such a choice indicates a problem that renders him or her unfit as a decision maker.
It’s a pretty consistent theme when you listen to the GOP, who seem to be constantly talking over the heads of the 99% to... well, someone else. Mitt Romney, for instance, thinks that instead of getting student loans, or finding jobs in today's high unemployment America, young folks should just borrow the money from their parents to pay their tuition or start their own business.
Romney: This kind of divisiveness, this attack of success, is very different than what we’ve seen in our country’s history. We’ve always encouraged young people: Take a shot, go for it, take a risk, get the education, borrow money if you have to from your parents, start a business.
That’s right. All those young people now struggling with debt and unemployment are just too proud and pigheaded to hit up Pater for the scratch. Really, thats soooo silly! Bite the bullet and go to Mom and Dad. The guv'nor will fuss and grumble a bit, but in the end he can sell one of the paintings from his collection or something.
This is what happens when politicians get into the habit of speaking and acting with their biggest donors in mind. They forget that not everyone is an attendee at a $1,000 a head fundraiser, like this one:
Mitt Romney What a home this is! What grounds these are, the pool, the golf course. You know, if a Democrat were here, he'd look around and say 'No one should live like this.' Republicans come here and say, 'Everyone should live like this!' ('Exactly,' someone murmurs off-camera among the laughter and applause)
No doubt many people in that audience actually believe that Democrats are a bunch of wild-eyed radicals who want to take away everyone's pools, golf courses, and private dachas and force them to live in public housing, but I think most of us in the 99% know better. What a Democrat like Barack Obama would likely say is, "Not everyone lives like this." Something apparently lost on Romney and his fans.
The best response to the belief that income=competence and fulfillment can be found in Citizen Kane. It’s a quote from the most humane and canny character in the film, Mr. Bernstein. A reporter points out that someone Mr. Bernstein has dismissed as brainless made an awful lot of money. Bernstein replies:
Well, it’s no trick to make a lot of money - if all you want is to make a lot of money.
Crossposted from Thoughtcrimes